The overall rate of new cancers in the U.S. has been stable in recent years. And age-adjusted death rates have, on average, been falling. But some recent studies have spotted a troubling trend that points to increased cancer diagnoses among younger people. Analyses have found an uptick in early-onset cancers—that is, cancers that occur before age 50—in the U.S. and other countries. The underlying factors that might lead to this rise in early cancer have been unclear. Proposed causes have included increased rates of obesity and better detection through higher rates of cancer screening. [NIH] 

To better understand these apparent changes in cancer rates among different age groups, a research team led by Dr. Meredith Shiels of NIH’s National Cancer Institute examined two large nationwide datasets. These included mortality data from national death certificate information and cancer registry data representing the entire U.S. population. Most previous studies of early-onset cancers looked only at subsets of data from U.S. states and did not include comparison data from older age groups. 

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